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Researchers report that patients with HIV are successfully receiving liver and kidney transplants, challenging widespread reluctance by transplant centers to give scarce organs to people with incurable disease. Because thousands of HIV patients are living longer with powerful AIDS drugs, some develop organ failure for other reasons, making them candidates for transplants.

More than 80,000 people are now waiting for transplants, and more than 6,000 die each year waiting. While livers and kidneys are typically given to the sickest patients waiting, doctors will not give organs to anyone who is too sick to benefit. In many places, that means anyone with HIV. Just four or five hospitals offer organs to HIV-positive patients.

The data presented were taken from several US transplant centers and one in France that offer kidneys and livers to HIV- positive patients. Some of the patients were given lower-quality organs or organs from donors at risk of HIV-- one way to bypass others on the waiting list who may be pickier. Other patients received kidneys or partial livers from living family or friends. Still others came to the top of the list the same way other transplant patients do.

Editor's Note: from the Associated Press